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~ fall 2oo8 ~ 
issue #11

archives: j.s.

• free thought email #328: letters

• free thought email #208: celery

• free thought email #224: royalty

• another free thought email

• subject: meaningful(less)

• bio

Free thought email #328: letters

I watched Sesame Street a lot when I was young. I'm sure we all did (and it left us all with slight ADD, and the inability to follow a storyline that lasts longer than 12 seconds). Every episode, as I recall, was brought to us by a different letter-number combo. This week's episode, for example, might be brought to us by the letter L and the number 3. And throughout the episode they would use that letter and number as much as possible.

It just occurred to me how much of an unethical application of commercialism that was. I mean, this is public television, and they're outright pandering to their advertisers. How much did L and 3 pay, I wonder, for an full episode teaching children to appreciate their letter and number? Thank god Camel cigarettes and Boone's Farm never bought an advertising spot, we would have been subjected to a chain-smoking Snuffelupugus and the Cookie Monster washing down his treats with a quart of strawberry zinfandel. I mean, we know that Elmo is a sellout, but where was the Frog on the Street during all of this? Shouldn't he have been exposing this transparent attempt by the number and letter industries to foster favoritism in our youth.

And it makes me wonder how far these connections go. How powerful, exactly are the number and letter lobbyists? I'll bet you anything that the letter "W" contributed a small fortune (probably through back-alley channels) to George "W" Bush's political campaign. And that's why he was obligated to produce a War. Think about it, he could have called them "big, scary bombs," but instead insisted on calling them "WMDs." (It's well known that the letter W bought controlling shares in the M and D industries after the collapse of Enron).

I hereby call for a boycott on the letters W, M and D, and the number 4 (no reason, I've just never been a fan). In fact, it's probably safe to cut out the entire Roman alphabet until we see how deep these connections go. It's time we took our country back from the military-alphabetical-industrial complex and committed our democracy to nothing other than FReedom and FaiRness FoR all.

This message brought to you by the letters F and R, and the number 5 ("we're just like 4, but more").

Peace, JS

PS - Sorry it took so long to write. I actually have plenty to say about the new job, recent adventures and life here in general. But for some reason I can only motivate myself to type when I have nothing useful to say.

Oh, well.

Like celery, yeah I'm stalkin'

Allow me to apologize up front. I have nothing meaningful, or even bordering on interesting, to say. I just felt bad because it's been so long since I've written. That said, you'd probably do better to go do something meaningful: take your family on a picnic; put together a puzzle. But if you feel like reading my ramblings, read on. I'll number, as I don't feel very organized.

1. There's a war not going so well in Iraq. That sucks. In fact, I should start on a lighter note.

1 (revised). The Colts won the Superbowl. This is a victory for everyone but the Xenia Geldings (this is only funny to horse people, or anyone from Dayton).

2. The newspaper job is still quite an adventure. The editor was fired a few weeks ago, leaving me and one other poor sap to do all the work. The county sheriff hung up on me a few days ago. I've learned that any conversation that begins with "how do you respond to allegations that..." doesn't end well.

3. My car stopped stopping the other day. It still goes, it just doesn't stop. I suppose this is a good thing. I have many things around my house that simply don't go, and they won't get me to work, so I suppose it's better to have a car that won't stop than a toaster that won't get me to work. I took the car to a mechanic, who I'm pretty sure is running a front operation for the Russian Mafia (which means his prices are very competitive, since he doesn't need the money, but the trunk is always heavier when I pick it up). He said the problem is the "power booster." Now, I've had several unscrupulous friends (Kenny, Jeff, etc.) in the car trade who take advantage of car-idiots like me by telling them that something asinine like the "canooter valve" is broken, or the "blinker fluid is running low." My favorite story is Kenny's, when he told a guy how to drill into his blinker light to refill the blinker fluid... classic. I also enjoy my brother's stories about fixing humvees and telling people that "the upright shaft between the two ball joints is secreting a milky substance." Anyways, the "power booster" sounds more like a power drink than a car part, but I paid $200 for some guy to fix it. Now the car stops, but the electrolyte light keeps blinking low. I hope I didn't just learn an expensive lesson.

4. There's a war still going on. Yeah, it sucks, but we shouldn't forget that.

Peace, JS

 

Good morning all my little princes and princesses.

I'm still spinning along at a frenetic pace, so I'll number again.

1. My car died... or, more accurately, went careening into an intersection when the brakes failed (so much for getting the power booster fixed as mentioned above). It's an interesting story, and I'd love to tell it, but a lady went to the hospital claiming neck injuries (she was three cars in front of one of the ones I hit), so I probably shouldn't say anything until I know that I don't have an opportunist wanting to sue.

2. I started a blog about freelance writing. It's at www.justwurds.blogspot.com. Now the sad part: the blogs that I'm posting were actually written months ago, and I was going to try to get them published in a magazine about freelance writing. I queried a couple of magazines, and had no takers, then got busy at work and haven't had time to sell them since. So I gave up.

3. Entertainment: Watched "A Scanner Darkly," the other day. Good movie. Started reading "American Gods," not such a great book, though interesting premise. Been covering some court cases at work, it's like live drama, and a lot of fun to watch. Things I've absentmindedly googled recently and learned something interesting from: LSD tests in the 1950s, DMT elves (both of those were prompted by the aforementioned movie), Operation AJAX, "my robot friend" (it's trippy), black hole theory, porn.

4. Michelle and I are quitting smoking... again. This time we made a bet. If she stays off the tobbacky and I cave, then I have to pay for her to get her hair done, and a pedicure and manicure. If I inhale carcinogens no more, but she does, then she has to buy me a hooker.

5. That's pretty much it. It's nice outside (in the 70s), I think I'll go for a bike ride.

Peace, JS

 

 

Another free thought email from JS

So I'm admittedly drunk as sin. If you have no patience for such things, read no further.

 

I really don't know how to compose this e-mail. I really don't know what to say. But when one drinks, one feels like talking, and when there's no one to talk to, there's always the electronic void.

 

I guess I could go with the ol' tried and true format: shit's going well here, so how's shit with you?

 

Shit IS going well here. I got an article published in a Spanish language magazine. The editor translated it for me. If you really want to bake your noodle, search for my name in Google and click on Eco Latino, and there's me writing in Spanish. He butchered the story though. The English version sucks, at least, and I don't speak Spanish.

 

But I'm going to my good friend Kenny's wedding in Dayton next weekend. I can't wait to see everyone. It seems like it's been years. It seems like I'm in Japan again.

 

That'll be cool. I'm not looking forward to the snow (I haven't seen snow in almost three years), but I need to see Dayton again. I'll have my Dad's truck and some time on Friday afternoon, so let me know if you want to hang out. It'll be a rush job, but I need to see people I recognize. I need solid ground.

 

So give me your phone number (Rotsinger, Steph, and so on... Jeff, I have your number and owe you a game of pool) and I'll try to meet for coffee. I once told every one of you that I didn't want to lose touch, and I mean that. I'll wonder, probably after a bourbon or two, a decade or two from now, what ever happened to you, and it will drive me mad not to know. I fear that future.

 

The past that I know now is fleeting - it's worth remembering that I'm drunk, but still checking my spelling compulsively (it's a fucking neurosis ). I don't want to forget any of you. You are who I am, and who I become is meaningless without the meaning that you provide. That's my selfish motive. My artistic motive is that I've known you, and I need to know where lives go from where I've been that aren't mine. I can only live one life. And I need the rest of you to teach me the different paths that lives provide.

 

I'm a fucking journalist till the end. I need the truth. Your truths. what can I say?

 

I'll never know what it is to be a mother. I want to know. I'll never know what it is to live my father's life without him. I want to know. I'll never know what it is to live all your stories, to cry all your tears, to lie awake with all your fears, or to bounce in all your laughter unless you tell me. I truly want to know.

 

Steph, Jake, Rotsinger and so on, you'll understand this. If you want to capture life, you have to know life, and one can only know the life that one leads. There are so many others.

 

And I'm drunk. I forget.

 

I just smoked a cig, took a piss and poured another glass of whiskey. I can't stop typing. I don't know what I have to say, but I'm fucking resolute in saying it. Dammit.  Subconscious, let's get this over with!

 

I warned you at the outset. So if you feel like this is a waste of your time: fuck you.

 

I don't know whether to talk about writing or reality, so I'll do both. Jake, you once said that you had a hard time writing because of the honesty involved. Damn, that's deep. In order to write, you have to lay your whole fucking life on the line. Even if it's not about you, everything you write is about you. Writing. Good writing takes honesty, and it's tough as shit to reveal. I can't do it sober, and I can't write very well drunk. But in order to write well you have to talk about the shit that you know, the shit that hits you deep, and it's a bitch. I guess that's what I'm trying to do now. Or maybe I'm just killing time, who knows.

 

Maybe I'm not cut out to be a writer, because in order to write one must understand things one can't possibly understand. One must know the sinews of life, the breaths, the string theory that drives it all. I fall, callow, and cry at the concept, the pure concept. It's blue, baby blue.

 

But fuck all of that. This, writing, speaking, life, is a form of communication. While sitting in the aforementioned Kenny's Mustang decades (christ, has it been decades?) ago, I was famous for saying: "okay, i'm drunk, ask me any question and i'll tell the fucking honest truth." And this is the truth: I'll bleed life if that's what it takes. I'll shiver motionless in the alleyways of memory. I'll grab my fucking, throbbing spleen by its confused arteries and splatter truth all over this world. I'm a fucking journalist, and I'll die before I'll let the truth go unanswered. You want life? I'll answer your quandaries with fucking life. Truth is the thing that follows my every heartbeat. Life is why my eyes are open. It's what I was born for!

 

Or maybe I'm drunk and stupid. Maybe delusions of grandeur have more gravity than whiskey. Who knows? Who knows...

 

Why would you read all of this? If you've gotten this far, it's all about me. Or maybe it's about you too. Do you hear the lonely drums in the night? Do you?

 

You do, don't you?

 

I've run out of cigarettes, and I just went outside and smoked my last stale cigar that's been laying on my desk for months. I fear the whiskey is failing me now. This e-mail, this thought, this night, may be at an end. But like Socrates--or like some drunk fuck who really has nothing to say--I've said nothing. I've only raised questions. Are there answers? Who knows?

 

Does my life and these words serve any purpose? Do the words I've shared and tears I've shed have any meaning? Are they more that quivering nuclei, chemical responses to chemical questions? Do laughter or vomiting anguish, pi or pythagorus, have any part in the whole? Do words have meaning? Is there... is there balm in Gilead?

 

Who knows?

 

Peace, JS

subject: meaningful(less)

Bored. Feel like sending a free-thought e-mail. Here goes.

 

I'm right now drinking too-sweet coffee out of a Christmas mug like Christmas trees only fitting one day every year. There's a sock on my desk, god only knows how it got there; there's a lot that god only knows, you know.

 

Books scattered across my desk right now (meaning I haven't picked them up to finish them in a very long time, but I'm not done with them so I can't put them away):

 

1. Sleeping on the Wing, by Kenneth Koch and Kate Ferrell. It's a poetry anthology I had to buy for a class. It's pretty good, covering a pretty wide range. It starts with Emily Dickenson and ends, interestingly, with Kenneth Koch.

 

What I've learned from this book: Arthur Rimbaud wrote all of his poetry between the ages of 15 and 20, and never published a single thing after that. No one knows why.

 

2. The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant. Durant's a great writer, and can even make philosophy interesting, though not interesting enough to get me past page 63 in over two months. "...'Do you know,' asked Emerson, 'The secret of the true scholar? In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him; and in that I am his pupil.'"

 

What I've learned from this book: Philosophy has wasted several great lives. Socrates may forever be etched as a useless idealist, and Aristotle spent his entire life coming up with wrong answers to scientific questions.

 

I may never make it to page 64.

 

3. Unsolved Mysteries of History, by Paul Aron. I haven't actually started reading this one, yet. I just got it in the mail from my parents yesterday. Every gift-giving holiday that comes around I say "this is crap. I think people should just give each other gifts without being told to by the calendar." But this might be the only time I've ever completely arbitrarily gotten a gift. And I know for a fact I've never given one. Parents kick ass.

 

4. House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. I just finished reading this and now I'm leafing through the appendices. A messed up book I can't get out of my head. I've already unleashed the turmoil arisen by this book in private discourse with most of you. So I won't bother with it here. It took me to strange places and beat the hell out of me there. If you haven't read it. Read it.

 

That's it. Poetry, philosophy, history and fiction. And I spend far more time than any of this watching "West Wing," and sitting on my back porch talking to Michelle, smoking cigarettes and staring off into space. I wonder, in the big scheme of things, which of these activities is the most useful.

 

Probably the staring off into space part.

 

Peace, J.S.